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Hamlet (play)
Concordance Builder Under Construction Welcome to the first Worldwide Collective Concordance Building Project! You are invited to read along with us and make notes on the Wiki Hamlet Concordance Pages, or simply take advantage of the collective internet mind, and breeze through one of the most challenging plays of all times, inside or outside of the world of English Literature with the help of the world internet community. About Hamlet Nearly twenty years to the day from the event where the Danish King, Hamlet, vanquished King Fortinbras of Norway in single combat and stripped him of his lands, his son rises to face the Dane once more in the name of his fortune and people. While young Fortinbras makes preparations for his invasion, young Hamlet wanders the corridors and courtyards of his ancestral home, Elsinore, half love-sick for Ophelia, the daughter of Denmark's lord high chamberlain, Lord Polonius, and half mad for revenge for what he has come to learn was the murder of his father by his uncle and mother. Thus unravels a tragedy which is to ultimately prove fatal to all the major protagonists of play, sparing only the young prince of Norway, who finally appears on the stage to claim that paternity lost by his father in the decades-old fatal joust with young Hamlet's father, accompanied by Hamlet's friend and liegeman, Horatio. Though Claudius' motives for slaying his brother are never painted as anything more than greed and lust for power, Lord Polonius is depicted as a much more complex man, and far more influential in the final outcome of the tragedy. He is convinced of Hamlet's emotional involvement with his daughter, and from the outset spends his energies attempting to catch out the prince in his love for the girl. Though his motive is ostensibly a result of protective and fatherly feelings, he demonstrates a singular lack of the same emotions in his relationship to his son, Laertes, spending his silver to hire a spy to follow and entrap the young man in transgressions and indiscretions after shipping him off to Paris, ostensibly for his cultural betterment. However, Polonius, in his eagerness to similarly entrap Hamlet falls victim to a careless swordthrust aimed by the young prince at what he perceived to be an unwanted intruder in his mother's bedchamber. Polonius had secreted himself behind a woven screen in the Queen's quarters, so as to be able to overhear the conversation that would ensue between Gertrude and her son when the young man was summoned to her private quarters in hopes that he might reveal the reason for his morose and erratic behavior. The swordthrust into the concealing screen would prove a mortal one for the great lord, and the cause of all the action to come. While Ophelia would succumb to suicidal feelings stemming from her father's untimely demise and Hamlet's erratic ways, his son would end his days through the fateful misconception, miscarrying and misconsummation of his vows to revenge his father and sister, through accepting the assistance of Claudius, whose plot to kill Hamlet was thoroughly flawed. The king's choice of murder weapons would prove the general undoing when the poison he chose to work his mischief is inadvertently turned against his queen. Then, another lethal venom, procured by Laertes and applied to his dueling sword, yields to both him and Hamlet fatal consequences when they switch weapons in the climactic duel, and ultimately finds a target in Claudius, carried home by a sword-thrust from Hamlet. The historical dates are uncertain, but the stage for the tragedy is certainly set around, almost certainly after, the time of the conquest of William, the Conqueror. For Europe, it is the Early Middle Ages, sometimes called the Dark Ages, for Norway and Denmark, rival "Viking" powers, an age of expansion and freebooting adventure. The reference to the French and Normans at the end of the play, is most certainly to the denizens of the territory known as Normandy, one settled for the most part by Danes when the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles the Simple, exchanged that right for their entering into the defense of Paris against other Viking raiders. However, it is not out of the question that the Norwegians also contributed settlers to that effort. Thus, though Hamlet will, before the end of the play, be sent to England to "collect tributes long neglected by the English," he also accepts an invitation to duel with a "French" (i.e. Norman) adversary, before he learns that his opponent is Laertes. It is likely that the tributes mentioned by Polonius have "long been neglected" because William's conquering army is now in the position to tax the English directly, as well as exclude the Danes and the Norwegians from the onerous practice of exacting bribes to stay away, the hated Danegelt. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, is a highly politicized tragic play with some overt sexual references, and suitable for mature High School and College students. John DeGrazia